Soft Drinks Targeted by Anti-Obesity Campaigners

from the Guardian (UK)

It's the cinemas that the nutrition adviser Susan Jebb worries about most. People do not generally buy cola in supersized buckets, but in the cinema we do, along with vast tubs of popcorn. A large 16oz cup of cola contains 16 teaspoons of sugar, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. That is a potentially considerable problem for the waistline.

"Because it is in liquid form, the evidence is that [a sugary drink] doesn't fill you up," says Jebb. "They seem to supplement our food rather than substitute. If people have 400 calories of Jelly Babies or 400 calories of drink, they may eat less after the Jelly Babies, but they don't decrease their calories at all after the drink."

Sugary drinks are increasingly indicted as partly responsible for the expanding girth of western nations. Jebb, head of diet and population health at the Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Research unit in Cambridge, is excited by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to ban sugary drinks being sold in containers larger than 16oz. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/may/31/soft-drink-obesity

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